


pushed by a breeze

by capo (gliss)



Category: Tales of Zestiria
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-28
Updated: 2015-04-08
Packaged: 2018-03-20 01:44:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3631929
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gliss/pseuds/capo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even in silence, Mikleo can hear, crystal-clear, everything that makes up Sorey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Fountain of Hearts

from tumblr:

 

> can I request Mikleo being a really curious forest nymph or something and going and trying to explore the "human's ruins" or something and encounters Sorey at the Fountain of Hearts, where one is supposed to find their soul mate (though if he keeps that info to himself or not is up to you.)

 

[...]

 

It’s dawn; the grass murmurs sleepily against damp soil. Sorey picks his way carefully over an unsteady slope, thinks twice about it, and then skids down the hill on the other side, laughs the dirt from his face. Light casts his skin rosy, and in a few minutes, morning breeze comes to sweep his damp fringe away from his forehead.

It takes three more hills for Sorey to notice the slight shape moving with him like a shadow, and then three turns of focus for him to pick out the slender curves of his face under increasingly sharp sunlight. From there, it’s  three steps to sharpen the eager look in his eyes, three almost-asked questions to identify the abelia flowering in his long, cloudy hair, three smiles to establish him as friendly party, three laughs to start the race towards the ruins up ahead.

Sorey is almost certain he touches the cool stone first, dust and history and the fineness of both running against his palm, but he looks over with an eager grin all the same, to where his competitor is dusting off his hands as well, and then the rest of the world makes itself heard under his breaths. “Thanks for the morning run,” Sorey offers, holding out his hand.

“That was nothing.” Another quick smile, a brightening in already bright eyes, “I’m Mikleo.”

“I’m Sorey, then,” Sorey laughs. Mikleo takes his hand briefly. His skin is cool as the age-old relic both of them seek.

“You move pretty well for a human,” Mikleo tells him, as they proceed to inspect the stone together.

“You move pretty well for a nymph,” and Sorey’s eyes wander over Mikleo curiously, stopping fleetingly first at the flowers in his hair and then at the way his lower lip pouts just slightly before quickly returning to the ruins. “Aren’t you supposed to be a hundred years old, or something?”

Mikleo’s eyebrow shoots up. “I’ll have you know, I’m nineteen years old.”

“Eh… wait,  _really_? You’re not that much older than me!”

“Yeah, and what is a kid like you doing all by himself looking for ruins at six in the morning?”

“I’m looking for ruins. I’m a pro-adventurer!” Sorey grins, looks ahead to where water is trickling. “Race you to the fountain!”

…

The Fountain of Hearts stands peculiarly unobtrusive in the middle of the stone ruins, cracked and damp and a little bit disappointing, if Mikleo’s being honest. Much more interesting is Sorey, who thinks everything is occasion for a smile and a race and a laugh.

Sorey, the eighteen year old human. Sorey, who somehow feels infinitely older than Mikleo himself. Sorey, who wanders around by himself but doesn’t look lonely, or even alone. Somehow there are always invisible hummingbirds tugging at the ends of his hair, a song caught gently between his teeth, an entire conversation between two people caught in the wide spread of his hands. Even in silence, Mikleo can hear, crystal-clear, everything that makes up  _Sorey_.

Right now, a large part of Sorey chimes impatience at him. Mikleo sighs softly, and flower petals flutter down onto his shoulders.

“Hey— are those flowers  _growing_ on your head?”

Mikleo gazes out from underneath his bangs. “Of course they are.”

“Wow…” Sorey looks genuinely pleased, and then he reaches up, takes a flower gently towards his face and inhales. Mikleo feels himself shiver in a way that’s kind of in hindsight; he can barely feel Sorey’s fingers, but he feels his breath, feels the way the air around Sorey hums, pleased. “This. You smile nice.”

It’s said so openly and honestly, dropped at a speed that from anyone else (Zaveid, probably) would be casual, that Mikleo’s eyelids flutter, and his eyes alight on Sorey’s. Sorey’s face is so earnest that Mikleo ends up letting him play with his hair, leaning against the ruins and trailing fine dust in brownish patches into his ponytail. Sorey’s fingers catch sections into his palm and lets the rest flow through the space between his fingers, smooths out a song against his back that Mikleo thinks he can actually hear, light and soothing and melodic.

When he talks again his voice is hoarse. “Have you heard about the story of this fountain of hearts?”

Sorey’s working at the tie in his hair; Mikleo feels like he should stop him, but excitement bubbles in his stomach, young and yellow like the morning sun. “Yeah, it’s supposed to grant immortality or everlasting love or something. Most of the records I’ve read dispute it one way or the other.”

“You haven’t heard anything else?” Mikleo asks in surprise.

“No? Well, back in the day it was supposed to be this magnificent feat of architecture, and, it’s not bad now, but…”

Mikleo contemplates saying more then; Sorey surveys the fountain. It’s not much of a fountain anymore, but water still runs and the air is still bursting with time, stuck like a coiled up spring.

— The Fountain of Hearts, supposedly, leads a person to their soulmate. Mikleo hadn’t believed it when Zaveid yanked on his hair and teased him, nor had he believed when Edna found a book of odes on the subject of the fountain and then delivered several painful sounding selections in her cool monotone, nor even when Lailah asked him, point blank, if he believed in soulmates. But now, Mikleo thinks about Sorey, and he thinks about what it might mean that Sorey’s eyes and smile and gentle hands are significant in his life, and he thinks about what it might mean that he is significant to Sorey (and his eyes and smile and all the rest).

“A-ha,” Sorey declares eagerly, tugging carefully; Mikleo feels pressuring easing off against his scalp and a second later, his hair tumbles down around his shoulders. “It’s so long! Have you ever cut it?”

“Why would I do such a thing?” Mikleo asks in complete confusion.

“You have to let me try one day, then,” Sorey insists, placing his hands on Mikleo’s shoulders. “I bet I’d be really good at it. I’ve always cut my own hair, see?”

Mikleo takes a look at Sorey’s hair, which looks like he’d attacked it with a hunting knife.

He smiles. One day, then.

 

**end.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> { tumblr prompt | meeting at a festival }

Sorey considers the night, bids farewell to the last sparks of a firework. They wink at him like an open secret, _we’ll meet again_ ; afterwards, he walks his bike up a grassy slope, against the currents of people and cellphone screens bobbing unsteadily in the darkness. The excitement from earlier that evening still catches in patches on his face, heightened color on his cheekbones and eyes stuffed full of bright festival lights; he loves the festival, loves the laughter and music and glossy caramelized treats, but he loves this too: the quiet glow of lanterns in the night, a sea of underwater stars, a quiet wind taking the hum of a good night and guiding it into rest.

There’s a boy resting at the top of a hill, bright as a ghost in the moonlight. His slim fingers are cupped around a harmonica, and the long notes pulse in the air with the thrum of cicadas, draws summer in through a breath and comes out silver-edged and nostalgic. Sorey pauses his bike, and the boy pauses his music to look at him through a pair of scholarly-shaped glasses.

“That’s pretty,” Sorey tells him, because it is.

“Thanks.”

Sorey and his bike move closer to the boy and together they catch the flash of the harmonica before it’s cupped again into slim hands. How can a boy’s hands be that slim? Sorey looks at him curiously.

“Do you play here a lot?”

“No. Sometimes.” The boy’s eyes are restless; his fingers tense with unsung melodies. He takes in the part of Sorey’s mouth (and Sorey _feels_ it, feel the precise way his mouth comes under scrutiny and runs like glass up his spine, rolls over each individual joint) and finally asks, in a way that’s mostly polite but also genuinely interested, “Do you?”

“I have a ukulele at home,” Sorey laughs. His ukulele stays at home, mostly because it’s missing one of its strings and he needs to get a new one. An echoing ripple comes from the harmonica. “I’m Sorey.”

“Mikleo.”

Sorey laughs again. He finds humor in all the things that make up Mikleo, a boy resting on a restless hilltop, with slim hands and a mysterious harmonica. It’s the kind of humor that makes people laugh when a kitten stumbles: a gentle kind of humor. Maybe Mikleo has a similar sense of humor, because he smiles faintly, and leans back into the air like there’s a cushion behind him, and invites Sorey to sit next to him by the way his shoulders relax. The bike’s support stand digs a hard knuckle into softer soil, wobbles, and finds its balance.

Mikleo’s hands open so that Sorey can see the engravings on the shell of the harmonica, metallic flourishes and plates flowering across the body.

“I got this from my grandfather,” Mikleo says, almost out of nowhere, but not quite. “It’s kind of a long story.”

Below them, the festival dwindles into embers. Sorey nods, and, in the darkness, Mikleo’s shoulder pushes against his arm, solid and warm.

“I’ve got time,” Sorey tells him.

 

 


End file.
